Art Ventures Deco Book

I have signed up for an ART round robin deco book with my Art-Ventureres group. It was decided to send the pages without covers & binding to help keep down the cost of postage. It was up to each person to decide what size (relatively small) and shape to make the pages for their book. I thought water color paper would be a fun medium to have the members use as pages for my book and cut the paper into 3" x 4.5" pages. Although we aren't sending bound books, I had fun decorating two pages to be the inside covers of my book. I'm including them in the post, and asking those who participate to sign either the front or back inside cover.

I was going for a resist technique using Versamark ink, but it didn't work on the watercolor paper as it does on coated paper. I started with randomly inking the paper with light colored distress ink.

Next, I inked a flourish stamp with Versamark ink, stamped on the paper and heat set it. Then I added a darker layer of distress ink and watered it to cover the paper. Instead of the images appearing as a resist, they showed up as a darker color than the second ink color. I could work with that. : )

Side note: I like using a craft sheet when working with wet inks, I clean up the extra drops with a plain sheet of card stock to be used in another project someday. No waste!

I stamped some different flourishes with the lighter shade of distress ink, and used this same color to edge my papers.

To finish the page, I added a darker shade of distress inked stamps to the corners and long edges of the papers.

These will be good pages to sign and will make my book special.